kottke.org posts about Jessica Pressler

“Doodie” is a portmanteau of “dude” and “foodie” and a good word to describe the phenomenon of (mostly) male foodies I’ve observed with increasing regularity in the past few years. Jessica Pressler coined the term in Help! There’s a Doodie in My Kitchen.

You see; these are the things you deal with when you live with a food dude. Or, as I have come to call them, doodies. I know, it’s an unfortunate term, but like its antecedent, the dreaded foodie, it is also extremely useful for summing up the characteristics of a certain breed of food enthusiast, the kind whose culinary preferences are intrinsically, classically male.

You know the type. Has Heat or Fergus Henderson’s Complete Nose to Tail on his bookshelf. Can sustain a remarkably long conversation about knives. Is super into his grill. Likes pour-over coffee. Is, at this moment, really excited about ramps. I could go on, but I won’t, because I am sure you know one. New York City in 2014 is rife with doodies: You can find them stalking around Smorgasburg, attending knife-skills classes at the Meat Hook, writing lengthy, tumescent odes to the Bo Ssam Miracle in the paper of record.

Update: Michael Hoffman of Food52 has another name for doodies: assholes.

The food dude is nothing new. He’s just a jerk who learned to cook. He’s taken what could be a force for good — feeding loved ones well — and made it into yet another thing that he can claim to be better at than his wife or girlfriend. (Apparently, food dudes are all heterosexual, too.)

Here’s what the food dude doesn’t do: He doesn’t spend his Sunday afternoon planning practical dinners for the week; he doesn’t make sure there’s milk in the fridge; he doesn’t make something the baby is going to eat. He might as well be building train sets in the basement. Even for people like us who love doing it, getting dinner on the table is, among many other things, a chore. And guess who’s doing the chores at Food Dude’s place? Women.